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Back in his basketball coaching days, Bernard Prevuznak would sometimes stride into the post-game locker room with a bunch of bananas and toss a few to the players as a reward for a tough individual defensive performance or a good shooting night.

Prevuznak took the idea from a motivational speech he heard by Hall of Fame coach Al McGuire, who urged the audience to always strive for the top banana on the tree, to constantly struggle to perform at their highest level.

As the new superintendent of the Wilkes-Barre Area School District, Prevuznak has a huge task ahead of him before he and the district can reach that highest piece of fruit.

Fraught with plummeting test scores, underperforming schools and a student population with high levels of poverty, transience and non-native English speakers, the district also faces shrunken financial support from Harrisburg and increasing expectations from Washington. Pile all that on top of past scandals involving the school board, and you begin to get an idea of the problems challenging the new boss.

The grandson of coal miners and the son of a special education teacher, Prevuznak, 54, is a product of the district he now heads. Born and raised in Wilkes-Barre, he graduated from Coughlin High School in 1976, then went on to Wilkes University, the University of Scranton and eventually Temple University for his Ph.D.

He began substitute teaching for the district in 1980 and has been there ever since, working as an art teacher for 17 years before moving into administration. Along the way, Prevuznak coached basketball at a junior high school in the district before serving as an assistant coach at Wilkes University and King's College. In 1986, he took a year sabbatical from the district to be an assistant at Clarion University in Central Pennsylvania.

Prevuznak, who has the lean build and look of an athlete (though he's a little softer around the middle these days), credits much of his ability to manage people to his years of coaching.

"It allows you to deal with all kinds of personalities," he said. "You work on trying to bring people together as a team."

The former coach will need to draw on that experience from the bench to guide his huge new team through its glut of problems while simultaneously wrestling with the day-to-day concerns of running an organization of numerous constituencies and an annual budget of $100 million.

"You're always pulled in five, six, seven directions at the same time and you simply cannot make everyone happy," said Jeffrey Namey, the district's former superintendent for the past 16 years, the last 10 with Prevuznak as his deputy. "As long as you can go home at night and put your head on the pillow and fall asleep and feel that you did the right thing, that's what (Prevuznak) has to be able to do. He's not going to make friends in this position."

Indeed, the new superintendent faced opposition even before he got the job, as four board members voted against his promotion, wanting instead someone from outside the troubled district. But Namey, who said he was also involved in the interview process, called his former deputy "extremely loyal, capable and competent," and the slim board majority who approved him praised his 32 years of experience with Wilkes-Barre Area, as well as his people skills and drive to improve the district.

"It would have been easy for him to sit back a few years before he retires, but he wanted to see the district do well and he wanted to be a part of it," said board member Dino Galella, a former teacher and principal in the district for 35 years.

The new superintendent has a few ideas to help the district do well, or at least better. Some possible changes he cited include a lengthening of the school day, an increased use of data analysis of test scores to better determine weaknesses in the curriculum, as well as the creation of a district-wide reading program that would be developed in-house by teachers rather than purchased from an outside company.

"We're going to examine everything," Prevuznak said. "Anything is on the table."

Board member John Quinn, who taught in the district for 35 years and worked under Prevuznak when he was principal at Coughlin High School, said since being appointed in early November, the new superintendent has been active in visiting schools and eliciting opinions from teachers on how to turn around a district with some of the lowest state test scores in Northeastern Pennsylvania.

"This is like the house is on fire," Quinn said. "(Prevuznak's) coming in as the fireman."

But in order to douse that fire, the new superintendent and former hoops coach said he would take a page from the playbook of the legendary John Wooden, who guided the UCLA basketball team to seven consecutive national titles and famously said, "Be quick, but don't hurry."

"I understand the sense of urgency in this district," Prevuznak said. "But that doesn't mean we're going to do them without caution."

pcameron@citizensvoice.com

570-821-2110, @cvpetercameron

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